Gazza: My Story (33 page)

My time at Boro wasn’t wasted. I got to meet Tony Blair when he came to open the club’s new training ground. We all had to be there at a certain time to meet him. I was put to work on the treadmill, ready for his arrival, so he could see how it worked.

He was late and I’d been on this treadmill for fucking hours, so when he eventually turned up, I said to him, ‘Where have you been, Tony? I’m knackered.’

‘Sorry, Paul,’ he replied. He seemed a nice enough bloke.

I was also contacted by Elton John, when I was at a low ebb after I’d come out of the Priory. He rang to
offer me one of his houses to stay in. He said he would make sure it was kept secret and I would be looked after, away from everyone. I could stay till I felt better. I didn’t take up his offer because it didn’t fit in with my plans at the time – I just wanted to get back to playing football as quickly as possible – but it was very good of him.

I’d first met Elton at Watford when I was seventeen, and playing in Newcastle’s youth team, and he was chairman of Watford. We beat them in the Youth Cup final and I was lying in the bath with the lads, holding up the cup. Elton came in to congratulate us on our win. I shouted out, ‘Elton, Elton, give us a song,’ but he didn’t. I ran into him some years later, at a charity do, and he seemed another nice bloke.

But overall, my memories of Boro are not very good, I’m afraid, because they are tarnished by all the injuries and drinking, drinking and injuries – the two demons that have dogged me throughout my life.

I began to realise that I needed a fresh start. It looked, anyway, as though Boro were keen to release me from my contract. There were reports of offers coming in from Australia and other exciting places. I could have stayed, held them to my contract, which had another year to run, so they would have been forced to pay me
up to another million or buy me out of it. But I’ve never been motivated by money – except when I’ve needed it to pay Shel’s maintenance. I just wanted to play football, at the top if possible. I was determined to stay in England and in the Premiership if I could. Boro were very good in the end. We did a deal and they agreed I could leave on a free transfer, if I found a club I wanted to go to.

Bryan Robson was having a tough time with his critics who believed the players were allowed to be too free and easy in the dressing room. Perhaps that was my fault. He had been so good and kind to me during all my problems, knocking himself out for me, bending over backwards to help, that maybe some of the others saw this and tried it on, and he didn’t quite get the respect he deserved. Perhaps he was too young for the job, having only recently ceased to be one of the lads in the dressing room himself. Perhaps he didn’t have enough experience at the time for such a big job. But as far as I was concerned, he was an excellent manager.

I went to Henlow Grange health farm and got myself really fit, and then I made contact with Walter Smith, who was now at Everton, along with Archie Knox.

It was clear Everton could do with some experience in their midfield. John Collins and Don Hutchison had gone, and they were about to lose Nick Barmby to Liverpool, which, of course, upset all their supporters. I thought I could do a good job for them, but it was quite possible Walter might not want me again, after some of the things that happened at Rangers. On the other hand, I’d played some of my best-ever football there under Walter and Archie.

‘Please, Walter,’ I said to him over the phone. ‘Will you help me? Take me back?’ I told him I needed to sort myself out, get back on the road again, but I was fit and wouldn’t let him down, honest, honest.

I could sense him and Archie at the other end, shaking their heads, saying, ‘No, not him again.’ I respected both of them so much. I was promising to be good, and meaning it, partly because I was scared of them – they are both very hard men – but also because it was what I wanted.

I have always tended to lose a bit of spark after two seasons or so at a new club. I don’t think it’s ever been down to a lack of motivation, or not trying. I’ve always tried hard, in every game. Too hard, very often, which is why I get injured or booked. I put it down mainly to
the long lay-offs because of injuries. Walter and Archie knew I had done it for them at Rangers, winning four medals in three years, and they believed – or hoped – I could do it again.

They gave me the biggest grilling I’d ever had. It went on for hours while they checked everything and spoke to other people. Eventually they agreed, provided I passed the medical. So I had the medical, but there was something wrong with one of the test results. Something had shown up. They wanted to sack me there and then, before I’d even begun. I explained to them that I’d just taken a few sleepers, and told them about Davey’s death, and how it had affected me. I hadn’t been able to sleep, so I was on strong sleeping pills. They believed me and I was given a two-week trial to prove myself, to show I was fit and right in the head. Then I signed for two years. Because I was on a free transfer, Everton didn’t have to pay for me. My basic wage was to be £12,000 a week and £5,000 appearance money.

I saw playing for Everton for two years as a perfect way to finish my career in England. To end it at the top, aged thirty-five, still playing in the Premier League: that was what I wanted. I wasn’t thinking any further ahead than that. Perhaps afterwards I might go abroad
– I didn’t know. I just wanted to concentrate on giving my all for Everton.

I deliberately chose to live in an out-of-town hotel, in Woolton, so I wouldn’t get mixed up with any boozers or have too heavy a social life. Or have the press following me round all the time, waiting for an eruption. I was having the odd drink, but not getting drunk.

I know I have only myself to blame for a lot of the attention I have attracted, but it was starting to get me down. But for ten years they had been looking out for me, ignoring other players out on the town. Punters with £1.99 disposable cameras would snap me with a beer or a kebab, and make themselves a fortune. And on the pitch it was turning into the same story. I would get picked on if I wasn’t playing well, and blamed by the press when the rest of the team wasn’t playing well, either, or even worse than I was.

It was about this time that I fell out with Mel and Len, who had been my advisers for many years. I decided they were proving too expensive. What brought it to a head was a small thing, a mobile phone. I wanted my phone changed, because too many reporters had got hold of my number, so I asked for a new one – a pretty simple thing, you’d have thought. I didn’t actually realise
how much it had cost me for some time, till I happened to be looking at a list of old expenses and charges. Getting another mobile had cost me several hundred pounds. I couldn’t believe it. I was told that somebody had had to wait for four hours for the new number to come through. Perhaps that was how they worked out the cost, by the hour. Whatever, I felt enough was enough.

I also hadn’t realised just how much money was being made out of my transfer to Lazio that I didn’t know about.

According to documents I have now got, at least £300,000 was paid to my advisers and their various firms and companies during the period of the Lazio transfer. Personally, I think they would have been extremely well paid if they’d got around a third of that.

The 2000–01 season started very well for me at Everton. I scored a spectacular half-volley goal in a pre-season game against Plymouth Argyle. In the next friendly, against Tranmere Rovers, I lost my temper, so we won’t go into that.

My league debut for the club came in an away match at Leeds on 19 August. I started on the bench, coming on for the last sixteen minutes or so. We lost 2–0. But the next game, at home to Charlton, I was on
from the beginning and we beat them 3–0. It turned out to be Everton’s biggest win that season. I played well and made a goal for Franny Jeffers. Walter said afterwards that he was very pleased with me. There was even talk of Kevin Keegan having another look at me.

I wasn’t quite back to full fitness, but I felt I was getting better all the time. I knew I was likely to be a sub, or be subbed, a lot. Walter had given me number 18, not my usual number 8, so that was a clue to his thinking.

We were due to play Boro, away, on 9 September and I sent Bryan a text message saying: ‘I’m coming to get you. Love Gazza.’ I bore him no grudge for letting me go. I would have done the same if I’d been the manager. I played for all ninety minutes. We won 2–1 and I set up the winner for Jeffers.

I was on the pitch for the whole game away to Leicester, too, and had a good tussle in midfield with Robbie Savage. We drew 1–1 and I was Man of the Match, turning in my best performance so far for Everton. I lasted for the full ninety minutes for the next five or six games. At Newcastle, where we won 1–0, I was applauded off the pitch by the Newcastle fans.

And then I got a succession of niggling injuries and
everything seemed to go wrong. I was depressed about not being able to play, and the team started doing badly as well, failing to win seven league games in a row in December and January. I began to get terrible headaches. I was scared that my brain was going, that I was going to have a breakdown. Once again I had a brain scan; once again it showed nothing untoward. And of course, that old vicious circle was cranking up: the more depressed I became, the more I started to drink. When I’ve been injured, I’ve tended to keep myself to myself. You are out of things anyway, the club seems to forget you, carrying on without you. I didn’t really want to be visited anyway, people trying to cheer you up. But of course keeping yourself to yourself, and without a wife and family to support you, or put up with you, you get more and more depressed. Football is all I know, all I’ve ever known, so being out of it was utter misery. I drank to pass the time, to make the days go quickly. That was the point of drinking.

In that game against Leicester, they brought on Stan Collymore. He didn’t really look interested and got some stick afterwards, but I felt sorry for him. It seemed to me he was a genuine depressive, a condition most people can’t understand. They think that people like
Stan, and me, I suppose, say we are depressed as some kind of excuse. I’ve been down there, I know what’s it like. It’s an illness. You do think the whole world is against you, that life isn’t worth it. I like to think that I also have a sunny side, that I am willing and able to get on with things, pick myself up, get focused again. Often I can do that. But I can usually only concentrate on one thing at a time. So when I have a worry, a problem, that’s all I can think about. I can’t take in anything else. But when I am doing something positive, like training, getting fit or, above all, playing football, I can focus on that and my depression recedes into the background. It’s off the pitch, when I’m alone, with only something bad like an injury to worry about, that I get really low.

I had more hernia trouble and was out for about two months. During that time there was more about me in the papers beating up Shel. No, this was no new outburst – she was helping to launch some police campaign against domestic violence, and they trotted out the same old stuff. It was in a good cause, I suppose, but it all ended up concentrating on me. That was all people took in, not the reason for the campaign. So all the headlines were about Gazza the Wife-Beater. ‘“I beat you up because I love you so much,” Gazza told Sheryl.’