Hunt is 56 and still recognisable, albeit not as John Cleese's 1970s hotel proprietor in Fawlty Towers. His hair, parted in the middle, is still thick but a little greyer than it was during his two years at Newcastle United in the early 1990s. On a video call from his home in Zaandam, just north of Amsterdam, warmth and humour permeate the memories of a nomadic life in and out of football which led him to spend 23 years in Central America.
Reminders of his days as a forward for United, West Bromwich Albion and Charlton Athletic are close by. He glances over his circular glasses at a framed copy of the Valley Review on the shelf behind him, explaining that he is now working for AZ Alkmaar, helping the Eredivisie side forge relationships with clubs and federations around the world who want to study the methodology behind their productive youth system. "Basically, I'm learning again. Dutch football culture is different to English football culture," he says. "AZ are focused on developing their own players through the youth system. It is a very exciting club to work for, especially when you see seven or eight players who joined at ten years old starting matches. The club's focus is on long-term development in all areas."
The role seems like a good fit for the amiable Hunt. "I'm having to learn Dutch pretty quickly," he adds in a broadly southern accent with a slight Norfolk edge, before demonstrating his grasp of a new language with a few phrases. "Most people at AZ speak English but they push me to speak Dutch, and I am sure I give them plenty to laugh about with my Dunglish. I'm about 75 per cent fluent. It's almost as difficult as speaking Geordie, I think."
Born in Essex, Hunt grew up near Norwich after his parents moved there when he was four. He did well at school, earning eight O-levels and taking a BTEC in business and tourism management at college at the College of West Anglia. He was a late starter in the game, joining Kettering from King's Lynn's reserves while holding down a job at Norwich Union. "I was a pensions administrator. Exciting," he laughs.
Kettering were flying in the fifth tier and Hunt, who supplemented his day job with wages of £100 a week plus £60 for a win, was attracting attention. He wasn't steeped in fandom - he didn’t follow a club, only played - and was oblivious to the scouts from Manchester City, Everton and Newcastle who were watching him. "I was playing village football until I was about 18. I don't know if you could do what I did back then. Turning pro was something that was quite a jolt to the system. I just didn’t realise I was going to be able to go further with my football. Then it went crazy.
"My mindset was a bit like, 'this doesn't happen to me - this happens to other people'. You think professional football is something played by superstars and heroes. That's what you think when you're little, right? You don't understand that could be you, that you could do that. I guess the reality for me was that I didn't expect it. I wasn't hoping for it. No-one even put that thought in my head."
Hunt remembers staying at his nan's in Romford the night before an away game at Slough Town, slaloming through central London "past the Houses of Parliament, the whole lot, which is not advisable." He reached the ground 15 minutes before kick-off to find the kitman hurriedly offering to park his car for him. "Unbeknownst to me, Jim Smith was going to be there that night. I didn't realise how big a deal that game was. In those days, if the manager came to watch you, you're 99 per cent sure that if you perform, something is probably going to happen."
Kettering won 1-0 and Smith parted with £150,000 to bring Hunt to St. James' Park in 1991. He drove up from Norfolk in his red Austin Maestro and moved into the New Kent Hotel on Osborne Road in Jesmond with Pavel Srníček, who joined at the same time. "I loved it," he says. "I made a lot of friends very quickly. I used to go to the Newcastle University nights a lot - I used to love them, they had some great bands playing there."
United, who trained at Benwell then, were drifting in the Second Division. The step up felt marked for a raw frontman unfamiliar with the standard teammates his age, like Steve Watson and Alan Thompson, had been primed for thanks to a more formal football education. "I'd never been properly coached at a good level," he says. "I was learning at a hell of a rate. Normally you learn a lot of this stuff in academies. I was learning it late, so that was an adjustment.
"It was a dressing room full of tough, talented characters. And you've got to fit in somehow. You have to have a hell of a thick skin. Nobody's giving up their spot lightly for you. You have to stand up for yourself. You learn that pretty quickly. If you don't, you just get run over. Nobody's there to hold your hand."
This was a miserable period for the Magpies but Hunt had promise. He replaced Mark McGhee and set up Mick Quinn's winner in a 2-1 win at Oxford on his debut, earning a first start on the left side of midfield - another schooling - at Middlesbrough in a grim 3-0 defeat three days on. Just over a week later Smith was gone, eventually replaced by Ossie Ardiles.
Hunt's face creases as he retells a version of an anecdote first shared by Steve Howey. Ardiles, a World Cup winner with Argentina in 1978, was trying to work on his side's shape and gently introduce them to the diamond formation with some shadow play. "We were all young lads, a bit baffled and confused," he recalls. "We kick off. I pass the ball back to Lee Clark, and Lee passes it to Steve Watson at right back. We're playing against nobody and we're going backwards, trying to figure out where everybody needs to go.
"Steve passes it back to Tommy Wright in goal, who's bending down by the post putting his gloves on, and the ball rolls into the net. We're 1-0 down after 20 seconds, playing against nobody."
Ardiles lasted less than a year and Kevin Keegan, his replacement, looked elsewhere for answers after his appointment in February 1992. Out of the squad, Hunt recalls watching a game at a pub in Wallsend before heading to the Tyne-Wear derby at Sunderland, in which Liam O'Brien famously curled home the winner. He had to run away from home fans who pelted the group with missiles as they made their way to the away end at Roker Park. "I don't think they even realised we were players!"
A 45-minute outing in an Anglo-Italian Cup defeat at Bari in November 1992 proved to be his final act in black and white. Hunt had scored 13 times in 51 games, a reasonable haul for a second tier novice, but there is a lingering disappointment that he wasn't able to play a part in what followed.
"It's hard to get advice on how to deal with that," he says. "You have to develop a certain level of resilience in football. You've got to be able to suffer a little bit sometimes, and use it to come out the other side stronger and a bit more developed, with the skills to be able to deal with top flight football.
"I think that knockback, as much as it was disappointing at the time, gave me the impetus to crack on at West Brom. But it would have been nice if I could have stayed at Newcastle and been part of that resurgence."
He moved on to the Baggies, initially on loan, in 1993, scoring a hat-trick on his home debut and netting at Wembley as they won the Division Two play-off final under Ardiles that year. He spent five years at The Hawthorns, during which time he met his wife, the former MTV VJ Simone Angel, on holiday in Italy where she was filming the DMC World DJ Championships.
In 1998, with his contract about to expire, he sat in front of the television at his home in Birmingham and watched a Clive Mendonca-inspired Charlton side beat Sunderland on penalties in the Division One play-off final. Simone, who lived in North London, was watching too and suggested that the Addicks were a likeable club. "I agreed, and said it would be great to go there. The next day, Alan Curbishley called me and said, 'we'd like to sign you'."
After relegation in his first term at The Valley, Hunt finished as top scorer in the second tier with 24 goals in his second season as Charlton returned to what was then the Carling Premiership as champions. He had started to feel sub-par and received a call the morning of a home game against Stockport County to confirm a diagnosis of glandular fever. He was told it would be discussed further after that evening's game, in which he scored a hat-trick in a 4-1 win. "People look at you and think there's nothing wrong with you," he says soberly. "You usually stay at home for an extended period. I was playing professional football and training. It's about the worst thing you can do."
At 30, he felt his game was becoming more complete. The first eight games of 2000/01 brought four goals and an approach to join up with the Austrian national team, for which he was eligible through his grandmother, but getting through club games was proving hard enough. A consultation with the chief medical officer at the British Olympic Association brought a new diagnosis; not of glandular fever, but of chronic fatigue syndrome.
Hunt wasn't afforded the time to gradually decline, finishing with one final goal in a 2-2 Premiership draw with Coventry in September 2000. "The ball came off the crossbar. I just kind of fell forwards and headed it into the net, and then my number came up," he remembers. "That was it. My last game."
He doesn't like to dwell on the closing of doors and says it would be at odds with his "very optimistic and upbeat" nature. But there is residual hurt in his account. "It's OK," he shrugs. "It's life. I was always grateful to get the chance to do what I did. But it's OK." He felt like a "zombie" and struggled to sleep. He was prescribed medication for depression but it didn't feel right. He never got to the root of the problem. "I'm hoping it's got nothing to do with heading footballs, because that's something that nowadays is becoming more and more pertinent. People are more aware of the dangers of head and brain injuries now."
The void of retirement opened up far sooner than he imagined but his grounding in the real world had given him perspective. He had always been a good saver and owned a house in Greenwich. Hunt and his wife had previously holidayed in Belize and the country intrigued them. "We were both just into our 30s, and we just thought, 'let's go and find somewhere nice and warm and get away from these horrible English winters'," he says. In 2001, they packed up and sold their home. "We bought some land and property, and ended up building this beautiful jungle resort. And it wasn't planned at all.
"It was a spontaneous and illogical thing to do. But then again, turning pro at football isn't really something many people do either. We just didn't have a plan."
Their business grew gradually. At first, having built a swimming pool, they began entertaining their neighbours' guests on occasion, a little reluctantly. But it felt like a good fit for an outgoing couple and by 2005 the Belize Jungle Dome had become a destination, with five different room options, and the country - where their sons, Aidan and Lucas, were born - had become home.
They threw themselves into the challenge of running the property and their connected tour company, Green Dragon Adventure Travel, and Hunt taught himself web design and search engine optimisation to develop their online presence. "We used to take people horse riding through the jungle with guides. We'd have people cave tubing, climbing mine temples and swimming with sharks and stingrays. It's such a wonderful, adventurous place to be.
"Where we lived, we were on the river. There are crocodiles on the river, you've got snakes and scorpions and very scary wasps, howler monkeys and all this. We'd see all of this on a regular basis, parrots too. It was quite a life. A bit like Tarzan, you know?"
Occasionally, West Brom and Charlton fans would fly out to stay, and he would find himself - patiently and willingly - regaling them with stories from his career. With the lodge now catering primarily for long-term rentals, the Hunts moved to the Netherlands in 2023. Simone works at a music company in Amsterdam, Aidan is at university, Lucas is working and Andy is at AZ. This morning is a quiet one and a session in a gym is on the cards. "You're just helping to delay that," he says, an hour into the call.
In the process of moving house Hunt found some clippings from his time on Tyneside, and framed them along with other mementos of a career that brought almost 150 goals in just a decade in the professional game. He returned to St. James' Park for the Magpies' 2-1 win over Manchester United in March with his AZ colleague Fred, an ardent Newcastle fan. They booked a stadium tour and picked out his name on the board listing former players opposite the Sir Bobby Robson statue. "I feel like a kid in a candy store when I go back, and just honoured that I did this. Some people take these things for granted. But not me."
He caught the train up from London, changing at Peterborough. "The first ticket inspector who walked up to me had the strongest Geordie accent. It just made me smile. It's such a beautiful accent, right? I was just enjoying listening to her. All she was doing was asking for my ticket, and telling off the guy behind me because he hadn't got one," he smiles. "It was so nice hearing the accent again."
