Gazza: My Story (41 page)

After Boston, which had turned out very stressful, I decided just to chill out for a bit, relax and take it easy. Then another football opportunity came up which I was quite interested in. There was this consortium planning to take over a certain club. They had lots of money and if they succeeded, they wanted me to come in and be manager with another ex-player working alongside me. I went to lots of meetings, watched a lot of videos and it looked pretty good. But it all fell apart. They thought that the club’s debts were only something like two million, which they believed they could cope with, but they were more like six million. So that fell through.

Over the last year, I have been invited to appear in various charity games. I did one at St James’, Newcastle, called ‘The Match’ which was Celebrities versus the Legends. The Celebs were managed by Graham
Taylor and the Legends by Bobby Robson. I was in the Legends. I played OK, and enjoyed it.

Then I was going to be in a big charity game in Madrid, with Zidane and Figo and Becks and the rest. It was all arranged, but come that weekend, I wasn’t well enough to play. I went out anyway, as there were various events connected to the match, and my dad came with me. He had a good time at least. He always does. I mentioned earlier in the book how at one time I had a load of Harley-Davidsons, nine in all. I gave most of them away, or left them at Shel’s. I told my dad he could have my last one. Then I decided I wanted to keep it and guess what the cheeky sod said? I had to buy it off him. So I did. Bastard. I’m now going to trade it for the very latest model.

Now that my playing career is over, I’ve realised one important thing: I’ll have to work for a living from now on. It’s a strange feeling, one that most people have experienced long before they’re thirty-seven.

I hate it when the papers say I’m skint, which a lot of them have been saying this last year. I might have lost or wasted millions, but I’m not bust. I’ve got myself a new agent, Jane Morgan, and she’s started working on various things for me. I’ve recently been offered my own
show on Channel 4, interviewing people, anyone I like. I think I might decide just to interview children. That’s about my level, being one myself …

I got approached about all those ‘I’m a Celebrity’ things, to go into the jungle or to the Arctic. I was offered £250,000 to go into the jungle, and I agreed, but then they came back and said I was ‘too famous’. I also wonder whether it had anything to do with stories a few years ago about me dating Vic Reeves’ wife Nancy, who was suddenly brought in. Who knows?

One thing I was really looking forward to was the BBC TV Christmas show,
Strictly Ice Dancing
. This was when a so-called celeb learns to skate along with a proper ice skater. They dance as a couple, against other pro-am couples.

I worked really hard on that as I wanted not just to do it well, but win it. My partner Zoia was great, a lovely girl. I thoroughly enjoyed it – till I had my accident. One of the papers said I fell and injured myself while practising at home with Jimmy Five Bellies. We were arguing about who was Dean and who was Torvill. That was the story in the papers. Quite funny, really, but total bollocks. I fell on the ice, while practising, and hurt myself. So I had to pack it in, which was such a
shame after all that work. Dave Seaman took my place – and he won, the bastard.

During the year I’ve also set up a company, along with Chris Evans and some others, and we are going to start our own chain of restaurants and bars. In fact, we have set up our own website and an office in London. It’s called G8. Which is what I decided would be my new name.

The plan was to call the new business G8 and all the restaurants and bars the world over would have the same name. Quite trendy really. The design plans looked great. But we now think it might be simpler and easier if we just call them Gascoigne’s. So that’s the present situation. But we’re still bashing on with it. I’m sure it will happen. They’ll be really high-class places. None of this phoney sporting memorabilia tat all over the place.

I did say that I was going to be called G8 from now on. It was partly a joke – but also serious. I was fed up being called Gazza, wanting to be Paul Gascoigne in future, a different sort of person. I am going to sign myself with G8 from now on. The 8 comes from the team number I usually had. And I also used to eat a lot. Neat, eh?

I’ve worked out a way of signing myself with my
new name. I do the G with a sort of O beneath it, so it turns into an 8. Well, it amuses me. What I do now is sign myself in the old way – ‘Paul “Gazza” Gascoigne’ – plus the new ‘G8’. I’ve done a deal with a memorabilia firm so that from now on, that will be my only authorised signature. That’s what will appear on official merchandising and autographed material.

I know it sounds mad, as if I’m getting carried away with myself, but it’s not me – this whole football memorabilia business has gone wild, with people being ripped off, dealers making thousands. And yet a lot of the stuff is fake.

What the dealers do is use little kids to get the autographs, which is why Manchester United have stopped their players signing autographs at the training ground. They found that it was the same kids, coming day after day – not for themselves but for the dealers who were sending them. They paid the kids a few quid then they sold the stuff on the Internet for hundreds of pounds.

You might have seen during this last year that my 1990 England shirt, from Italia 90, the one in which I cried, was up for sale at Christie’s, signed by members of the England team. The estimate was £20,000 – but
it went for £30,000 so everyone was pretty surprised by the high price. What people didn’t realise was that I sold that shirt in 2002 – for £90,000. It went to the
Observer
newspaper, who were running a competition in their sports magazine, as a sort of special promotion. The bloke who won it eventually decided to sell it. That’s how it ended up at Christie’s. So I was the winner, on that occasion, getting a better price than it fetched at auction.

I only wish now I had kept more of my England shirts and memorabilia. I gave most of them away – for charity events, or to friends. I probably wouldn’t have so many money worries today if I’d kept everything. I read the other day that George Best now makes far more money than he ever did when he was playing football just by being George Best, not for actually doing anything but from merchandising, books and stuff.

People do seem to love legends. Judging by all the offers I’m now getting, I do seem to be considered a legend. It’s nice, but I am surprised. I thought when my playing career was over, that would be it, end of my story. So despite the Boston United thing getting nowhere, which did depress me at the time, it’s not been a bad year in some ways. My playing career might be
over, but I’ll probably do the odd charity game.

And I am still hoping to be a coach. I still have a fantasy about being a top manager one day. Me and Chris Waddle are going to do some coaching work together and I hope I’ll pass my badge. There was a club in Newcastle, Australia, that asked if I was interested in a coaching job. I quite fancy that, going off somewhere I’m not known, getting my head down and learning the coaching trade. Or I might just concentrate on various business and media opportunities. I have found I can make some money, despite what some people predicted.

But I haven’t mentioned yet the two other things that have obsessed and upset me this last year. One of them I can hardly bear to go into, as it’s all been such a fucking mess, and buggered up my whole year, but the other is something I want to get off my chest, which I feel I have to, before I can move on.

I’m sitting in the Princess Grace Hospital in London. It’s not far from King’s Cross, I think. That’s where I usually arrive when I come down from Newcastle. Quite near Madame Tussaud’s, that’s another focal point I can always remember. Strange, but I don’t actually know the exact address. Yet I’ve been here so often they should give me a season ticket. Or at least my own key. It was here that I came after the Cup final of 1991 when it looked as if my career, not just my leg, had been ruined for ever.

This is the sixth time I have been ill and in hospital in the last year. What the fuck is wrong with me? Just when things seem to be going right, something comes along to bugger it up. Or is it me? Is it my own fault,
after what I have done to my body over the last thirty-seven years?

The first problem happened when I was still at Boston United. I developed an ulcer. I’ve had this sort of problem previously, but this was hellish. I had an endoscopy – camera down my gob and that shit – then they poked around, did various things, put me on some medication.

Next, my knee went. I had left Boston and was just chilling out, going to watch England train, and then Liverpool train, trying to pick up a few tips, see how they did things, compare and contrast, in order to help my coaching career and get my coaching badge. I was getting out of the car one day and my knee just buckled under me. I went to see Mr Browett, who has operated on my legs over the years more times than he’s had his own leg over – joke, I don’t know anything about his private life. I had to have an operation on it and I came here, to the Princess Grace.

Then came the ice skating accident, when I slipped and hurt my back. It felt hellish at first, but then it began to feel a bit better. I hoped I’d get over it. But I was at East Midlands airport, about to fly to Dublin to do a chat show, when I suddenly found I hadn’t got the
strength to pick up my own bag. The moment I tried to grip the bag, or anything else, I could feel my neck was in agony. My dad was with me and I told him to pick up the bag for me. I carried on to Dublin, did the show, but felt terrible.

I then got Mr Browett, when he was still treating my knee, to have a look at my neck. I got in a panic when I was told I had intrusions on the discs at the top of the neck, where it joins on to the spine. They did a little operation on the neck, going into the side of it and into the spine. I felt sore for about ten days, but it seemed to have sorted it out.