Gazza: My Story (4 page)

I hated being thirteen. Not just because it was an unlucky number; I hated being that in-between age. I was very depressed for all of that year, or so it seems to me now, looking back. I got obsessed with stealing. Anything, really. Sweets from shops – Twixes, Yorkies,
Mars bars, Marathons – or stupid things from Woolies which I’d give away. Or money from my mother’s purse. Or milk bottles from people’s doorsteps. The police only came to our door about me once, and that was to do with some football nets a kid had actually given me, which turned out to be stolen. I genuinely didn’t know anything about it, so they let me off.

One of my money-making scams was collecting empty beer bottles and taking them back to the pub to claim the deposit. On one trip, I noticed that they put the empty bottles in a crate at the back of the pub, so I sneaked round the back and nicked them, then went to the front to hand them their own bottles and get the money. It worked for a while, till they realised what I was up to and chased me out of the pub.

I stole apples and was always being pursued by people threatening me with the police. One bloke fired an air pistol at me and I got a pellet in my stomach. I was shitting myself. When I told my mam what had happened, she gave me a clip round the ear. I stole out of slot machines, the sort you get sweets from in railway stations. I learned how to put a bit of tissue into the machine so that people couldn’t get their money out and thought it was broken. I’d wait till they’d given up and
gone off and then pull out the tissue and get their money.

I stole for the buzz, not because I really needed anything. It seemed exciting. While I was doing it my heart would be thumping.

There was this little shop I’d go to where when you opened the door there’d be that ding-dong that tells the shopkeeper a customer has come in. The shopkeeper would appear and look over his counter but see nobody. He’d think he’d been mistaken, or that the customer had changed his mind and gone out again, and return to his back room. But I’d be there, lying flat on the floor against the counter out of his line of vision. When he’d left I’d fill up a bag with all the sweets I could get my hands on and run out of the shop. I gave most of them away. I couldn’t take them home, could I, or my mam would find out.

I stole things for years, just for fun. In fact I pinched some clothes from a shop not long ago. Just to see if I could, for the thrill of it. Obviously I didn’t need them, and I had more than enough money to buy them if I had wanted them. I just found myself sneaking them out to see if I could get away with it. Which I did. I took them back later.

When I reached fourteen, things seemed to get much better. Perhaps I’d begun to get over the events of recent years, or at least to learn to live with them. But more probably it was football that kept me happy and out of trouble – or some trouble, anyway. By fourteen I was playing more serious football, in proper teams, and I found that was what I liked doing best in life. I didn’t have twitches or worry about death when I was playing football.

Scouts first started appearing at our back door when I was about twelve. I’d got into the Redheugh Boys’ Club Under-14 team at that age and I did well. I loved playing for Redheugh. It was brilliant being with a proper club and playing on a proper pitch with real goalposts and nets, even if they had to be taken down after each game in case they got nicked.

I think David Lloyd from Middlesbrough might have been one of the first serious scouts to come and watch me. John Carruthers of Ipswich was another who arrived at our house. He’d seen me playing for Gateshead Boys when I scored a goal from twenty yards. That day I was wearing a brand-new pair of Patrick boots which my mam had worked overtime to buy. I felt I owed her something.

The first real trial I was offered was with Ipswich. They wanted both me and Keith Spraggon to come down for a few days. I’m not sure if I would have gone all that way on my own if it had just been me. We were put in digs and at the ground we met some of the stars I had seen on the telly: Terry Butcher, John Wark, Mick Mills. I asked them for their autographs and they were very kind. There was none of that pushing you away while they got into their flash cars. Not that I can remember many flash cars then. In 1980, footballers were well paid, but not that well paid.

Bobby Robson, the manager, was very kind to us as well. I liked the idea that he was a Geordie and could understand what I was saying. Not that I actually said much – I was very nervous. I felt so small alongside the grown-up players. Even Keith seemed to tower above me. Bobby Robson explained that most of us wouldn’t make it, but we shouldn’t get too upset about it. In spite of the kindness of Bobby and the players, I didn’t take to Ipswich, and I didn’t do very well. Which could explain why nothing happened there.

Keith and I rushed home to play for Redheugh in a Cup final. Before the match, while the other team were warming up in trainers, I sneaked into the dressing
room and swapped round all their boots. We won the game 5–0.

My next trial was with Middlesbrough. This time we were put in a proper hotel, not a hostel or digs. I know it was a proper hotel because it had a real snooker table, which I had to be dragged away from. I bunked off during the trial and came back to support Redheugh in a big match. I managed to step on some broken glass, cut my feet badly and had to go to Queen Elizabeth yet again. So it was my own fault that I never heard from Boro, but Keith was more successful: he was offered schoolboy forms.

Southampton were next. Lawrie McMenemy was in charge at the time, but I didn’t see much of him as he didn’t seem to be involved with the kids. I didn’t think much of the coaching and I didn’t like it there, either. I came home after a few days.

Finally, in the summer of 1980, Newcastle United came along. I suppose they’d been watching me, but perhaps they weren’t sure about me. When their scout finally turned up at the back door, my dad said: ‘What kept you so long?’ Newcastle had always been my team and I’d worn a black-and-white shirt since I was a nipper. I hardly even took it off to get it washed.

Newcastle took me on as a schoolboy. We trained at the club for two hours every Tuesday after school, and for longer in the school holidays. I still had a kickaround with my old mates, in the street or the park, and they’d want to know all the gossip about their heroes.

I got a chance to be a ballboy during one Newcastle home game, and it was brilliant throwing the ball back to the first-team stars. At St James’ Park I would often see people like Peter Beardsley and Chris Waddle. I loved them so much. Newcastle were in the Second Division then, and the previous season (1979–80) they’d finished a disappointing ninth. Bill McGarry was the manager when I first joined the club, but after a month he was out and Arthur Cox took over. I admired him, hated him, loved him and was terrified of him. He made a point of watching the kids play and nothing escaped his notice. He soon knew all of us by name. I could hear his voice booming out ‘Gascoigne!’ in my sleep. I used to play a few tricks and scams but I got away with them. I think he turned a blind eye to many of them as he seemed to like me.

Among the first team, Kenny Wharton was friendly to me, as was Colin Suggett, but it wasn’t exactly a
starstudded side. They were an ageing side, on the look-out for new young stars.

I used to get the bus from Dunston to the training ground at Benwell, which cost 5p. You were allowed a maximum of £5 travelling expenses a week because of course many of the lads came by train from quite a long way away. I didn’t, but I usually managed to claim the maximum. With the money I’d buy presents for my mam and dad or just spend it on silly things such as slot machines.

I’d developed a passion for one-armed bandits and spent all my money on them. I’d often put my last 5p, my bus fare home, in a machine and lose it, and have to run home. I suppose it did help to keep me fit. At one stage I was so mad about gambling on slot machines that I’d steal to fund the habit. I remember once being so desperate for money that I stole £15 from my sister Anna’s purse, and went off and lost it all. Anna was heartbroken. She’d just left school and it was her first week’s wages. She had wanted to be an actress, but the careers people at school advised her to try office work, so she’d become a telephonist. She’d saved the money for a night out. She was in a terrible state and I felt so guilty. It just hadn’t occurred to me it meant so much to her.

I hope I’ve made the loss up to her since. I vowed then not to gamble again, and I haven’t done – not seriously. I might have many other vices, but gambling on machines or on horses, which so many players do, has not been one of them. Well, apart from a few years later when I bought a 25p scratchcard. This was an isolated example. But, guess what, I won £2,000. When I came home with the money, me mam said: ‘Where have you stolen it from?’

When I was fourteen, I moved to a bigger school, Heathfield High. Mr Hepworth, the geography teacher, was my form master there. One day he was going on about something dead boring, like the Alps, while I spent the whole lesson practising my autograph on my school bag. He came over eventually.

‘What are you doing, Gascoigne?’

‘I’m practising my autograph.’

‘What for?’

‘I need to practise it as I am going to be a famous footballer.’

‘Only one in a million becomes a professional footballer,’ Mr Hepworth said. ‘So stop it at once.’

I told him I was going to be that one in a million.

But I still had a long way to go. I did get picked for
Newcastle Schoolboys at a much younger age than my team-mates, but I never played for the county, which is the next step up towards playing for England Schoolboys. I was asked to a trial for Durham County and I got a hat-trick, but I never heard from them again. I never found out why. I’d rush downstairs when I heard the postman at the door, but the letter never came. Was it me, or my family, or our reputation, or what? Even now, I don’t know. I think one of the reasons may have been that my dad wouldn’t arse-lick the powers that be, which all the other dads did. He never grovelled to teachers. He’d tell them to fuck off. There was one person involved with the county who definitely didn’t like me. It did upset me at the time, not getting a chance to play for England, but I told myself they were all stupid. They preferred to pick joke players, just as long as they were all overgrown.

I must have been just over fourteen when I got drunk for the first time. A friend of mine called Sean stole a bottle of vodka from a shop and we both drank it. I came home staggering, my speech slurred, and felt terrible, so terrible I vowed never to touch alcohol again, which I didn’t, not for another four years, till I was about eighteen.

But my brother Carl got caught up in something much worse – glue-sniffing. I cried for about two weeks when I found out what he was doing to himself. When I think of all the awful things our family has had to go through, I feel proud of them, that they’ve survived.

Carl fell in with a bad lot, got into other things as well, and was eventually sent off to a home for naughty boys. I don’t know where it was – I never visited him. Somewhere on the coast. When he left, I promised to send letters to him all the time and he promised to write back. In my first letter, I said, ‘Please come back soon. We miss you so much. Please, please come back.’ Carl took a while to reply, so I was dead excited when I opened his first letter to me. ‘Fuck off, Paul,’ he wrote. ‘I love it here. We get three meals a day and you can play table tennis and snooker. So fuck off …’

Later on, though, I could tell from his letters he was not enjoying it so much. He was being picked on and bullied by a bigger lad and didn’t know what to do about it. He’d written earlier mentioning a boot room, so in my next letter I suggested he should invite this lad into the boot room and then, the moment he was in, turn off the light and hit him over the head with the biggest boot he could find. And that’s what he did. He
wrote back telling me he was now ‘Top Boy’. He’d become the best in the school for fighting.

Carl was a good footballer himself, and played for Newcastle Youth. Many years later, I was talking to David Batty and he remembered playing against Carl, when he was with Leeds Youth. It was a match in which Carl got thumped. Some kid just smashed him and he was seriously injured. When I started playing, I looked out for that kid to pay him back.

Carl was good, but he gave up not long afterwards. That injury didn’t help, but his main problem was that he was more interested in drinking, chasing girls, all the usual stuff that can distract lads at that age. Basically, he couldn’t be bothered.